by James Yaffe
Talking about poems, my heart leaped up. I realized how nice it would be to spend the evening with a woman who nods her head at you while you talk and hangs on your every word.
EPILOGUE
My darling son Davie,
I’m sitting here in the airplane, flying back to New York, and writing to you this letter. And even while I’m writing it I know I’m not going to send it.
For a couple of days now I’m arguing about this inside myself. Should I tell you the truth, or should I keep it strictly to myself? On the one hand, is it good for my health I should keep it inside myself like a bottle? On the other hand, if I tell you the truth, don’t I know what you’ll do with it?
So what I decided is, I’ll write this all down on paper, get it out of my system, and then I’ll throw it away.
What I’m referring to is who killed the professor.
No, it isn’t exactly that I told you any lies again. Everything I explained to you two days ago was true. My chain of reasoning didn’t have anything wrong with it. It was a beautiful chain of reasoning. But even while I was putting it together, I felt funny about it. I couldn’t pretend there weren’t a few bits and pieces which just wouldn’t fall into place.
What I finally realized is, these bits and pieces don’t contradict my earlier conclusions. What they show me is, there are other conclusions, too. The ones I can’t ever tell you about.
Probably you could work them out by yourself, if you went over in your mind everything that happened in the last week.
Anyway, the point is that Mike Russo did everything I told you he did. No, excuse me, almost everything. The one thing he didn’t do was to kill Bellamy.
He said so himself, you remember? He said he got to Bellamy’s house, he went into his living room, he was all ready to kill him, but somebody beat him to it. You didn’t believe him. For an hour or so I didn’t believe him either. Why should we believe him, a man that told as many lies as he did and definitely, except for one small technicality, was a murderer?
But on this one matter he was telling the truth. Once I was ready to consider this possibility, all those bits and pieces clicked into place.
First of all, when you finally got Luis Vallejos to admit he went out to Bellamy’s house, what did he say he did? He said he walked into Bellamy’s living room, found his body, started to run out in a panic, bumped into something and lost his earring, which rolled under one of the bookcases. This happened, Vallejos said, at maybe ten minutes after eight, just before the police officers got to the scene of the crime.
So let’s think about this fact along with another one. Samantha Fletcher, when she had dinner with Vallejos between six-thirty and seven-forty that night, thought there was something different about him. “His face was different,” only she couldn’t put her finger on why.
I’m asking myself, could the reason be that Vallejos was wearing only one of his earrings during that dinner?
Could he maybe have lost the other earring earlier? Could it have rolled under Bellamy’s bookcase before six-thirty?
In other words, could Vallejos have gone to Bellamy’s house not after but before he met Fletcher at the restaurant?
Second of all, at the end of their dinner together, Vallejos left Fletcher to go to the washroom, he always went there to give his hair a combing. A few minutes later he came back, and he was looking—I’m using Fletcher’s own words—“as if he’d seen a ghost.” Then he announced he had to go somewhere immediately, but he would be at Fletcher’s house by ten o’clock.
So again I’m asking myself—what was Vallejos going to do which he expected wouldn’t take him longer than a couple of hours? He was going to Bellamy’s house, he told us, to try and talk Bellamy into giving him a passing grade on his exam. But how could he be sure such a talk would be short enough so he could get to Fletcher’s house by ten? It’s a twenty-five-minute drive to Bellamy’s house from downtown Mesa Grande—and Bellamy might delay Vallejos when he got there—or Bellamy might not be home, and Vallejos might have to wait for him. A lot of maybes, but none of them stopped Vallejos from promising Fletcher he’d be at her house by ten.
Could it be that Vallejos knew for sure he wouldn’t be talking to Bellamy when he got to his house that night—because he knew Bellamy was already dead? Could it be that Vallejos’ real reason for going there was to search for the earring he dropped when he was in that house earlier in the evening?
Could it be that the “ghost” Vallejos saw in the restaurant washroom was his own face in the mirror, minus the earring?
Third of all, Vallejos told us he ran out of Bellamy’s house so quick after finding the body that he didn’t even shut the door behind him. But you and the police, when you got there only a few minutes later, found that door shut tight and locked.
Why was Vallejos confused about this? Could it be he didn’t actually run out of that house just before the police got there, because on that occasion he never even had time to go into it? Could it be he heard a car coming, your car, while he was still on the porch steps walking up to the front door, which meant that he had to run away before he had a chance to go inside and search for his earring?
Could it be that Vallejos was remembering an earlier visit to the house, at six o’clock or close to it, at which time he did forget to shut the door behind him?
We shouldn’t forget what Russo told you. He found the front door halfway open when he got to the house at seven-fifteen, he walked into the house by this door, and when he left in a big hurry a little while later he slammed the door behind him.
You see what it proves, this business of the door? Vallejos left it open when he ran out—Russo slammed it behind him when he ran out—you and the police found it shut tight. Which means that Vallejos was in that house before Russo, that his story about being in there at eight-ten is a lie.
Fourthly, Vallejos’ sister told you he took her car and left his parents’ home at five-fifteen Wednesday afternoon. Fletcher told you Vallejos arrived at the restaurant at six-thirty. It doesn’t take an hour, fifteen minutes to get from the Vallejos house to the Seafood Grotto. So where was the boy all this time?
Fifthly, when Vallejos described for you the scene of the murder, he made a little mistake. He said, “I went up to the phone, but I didn’t pick up the receiver, I left it on the hook.” But Russo, when he discovered the body at seven-fifteen, took the receiver off the hook and dropped the phone on the floor. This was what you and the police officers saw a little over an hour later, when you went into Bellamy’s house.
In other words, Vallejos could never have seen the phone sitting in its place, with the receiver on the hook, unless he was inside that room before Russo got there.
And the only explanation for this is, he killed Bellamy himself.
So here’s my theory about what happened. It isn’t a theory, it’s the truth, because nothing else explains everything. Luis Vallejos wanted to make one last try at talking Bellamy into changing his grade, and he went out to Bellamy’s house for that reason—but he did it between five forty-five and six o’clock, just before his dinner with Fletcher, not at eight-ten, right after his dinner with Fletcher.
Bellamy let the boy in, and he reacted to the apologies exactly the way you’d expect. He sneered. He laughed. He told the boy to get out of there. Maybe he even said he’d call the police and report that the boy came there to threaten him. Maybe he even turned away from Vallejos and started to the phone.
Luis Vallejos has a hot temper. Even a cool temper could heat up with Bellamy’s type treatment. The boy grabbed the first weapon he could get his hands on—it happened to be the paperweight that was shaped like an open book—and hit Bellamy on the back of the head. Bellamy went down, and the boy was sure he was dead. It wasn’t premeditated murder. At worst maybe it was manslaughter. A good lawyer could maybe get him off with temporary insanity. But who was going to believe his story?
He tried to wipe his fingerprints off the paperweight, and then he
ran out of the house. He drove straight to the restaurant where Fletcher was waiting for him. At the end of the dinner he noticed his earring was missing, guessed where it was, and drove out to Bellamy’s house again hoping he could find this evidence against him before somebody found the body. But the police got there too soon, and he had to run away.
And in the meantime what about Bellamy? Head wounds are tricky, like the assistant district attorney told you at the beginning of this case. Bellamy was unconscious for an hour or more, bleeding inside, probably dying—but he wasn’t dead yet. When Russo got to the house at seven-fifteen, there was still enough life in Bellamy so he could make “gurgling noises.”
Then he died, and Russo put the book into his hand, knocked over the telephone, made his meshuga phone call, and turned the case into a big mishmash for everybody.
So that’s what happened, Davie. But knowing what happened isn’t enough. I also had to decide what to do about it. I decided, naturally, by using my logic, which is the only thing that makes human beings different from the lowly animals. Meaning that I asked myself one question: If Luis Vallejos goes to jail, what’s the result?
A nineteen-year-old boy—who was never in trouble with the police before, who studies hard in school, loves to read books, and maybe has a wonderful future ahead of him—loses twenty, thirty, years of his life. Not to mention what happens to young boys like him when they’re in prison, as we’re all familiar with from shows on television.
The boy’s mother and father and his brothers and sisters that love him and all their lives have sacrificed to give him an education get their hearts broken.
Samantha Fletcher, if the boy goes on trial, testifies in the courtroom, and her affair comes out into the open. So she’s fired from her job, and she has to give up the teaching profession.
Mike Russo’s mother, in the old people’s home in Washington Heights, reads about the Vallejos boy’s trial in the newspapers. She finds out what her son was really like, and so do the other old people. Another heart is broken.
And why does all this happen? Because of a no-good who got pleasure from kicking people that were weaker than him. All right, I know I said to you once that even no-goods have a right to live their lives, that nobody should get away with committing murder. But was it murder, what this boy did? Or was it a fit of temporary insanity, when this no-good said things to him that nobody should have to listen to? Is he a murderer, or is he a confused frightened boy that lost his temper, and everything went black, and he didn’t have any idea what he was doing?
So my next move is obvious, isn’t it? No move. Nothing. I keep my mouth shut.
You see any flaws in my logic?
There aren’t any flaws. Even so, if there’s one thing I’m positive about in this world, it’s this—logic or not, you won’t go along with what I’ve decided to do.
I can hear it now, in my imagination, what you’ll say to me. How I’ve got no right to take the law into my own hands. How no individual person, especially an uneducated old lady, should put herself above the rules of society. How it’s about time I learned that it isn’t up to me to see to it that justice is done. And so on and so forth. I love you like only a mother can love her son, Davie darling, but frankly I’m not crazy about hearing all that foolishness from you.
Not that I’m blaming you for it, you understand. At an early age you made up your mind you should be a policeman. God knows it wasn’t what I advised you to do, but since when do children take the advice of their parents? So you became a policeman, and they taught you to think in a certain way, and now you’re stuck with it.
And the way a policeman thinks, a man who commits a murder, even a boy who commits a murder, has to be punished for it. It’s too bad if innocent people get punished along with him, this is just how it has to be.
In other words, if I was foolish enough that I told you the truth about the Vallejos boy, you wouldn’t let five minutes go by until you told it all to your boss and to the district attorney. The case would be reopened, evidence would be dug up, and pretty soon everybody who’s happy now would be miserable all over again.
Including you, by the way, because you’re a sensitive kindhearted person and you’d feel terrible about what you did.
This I can’t allow to happen. For the sake of all those people and for your sake, too.
Which is why you’ll never see this letter. It goes into a trash can as soon as the airplane lands in LaGuardia airport. Even so, I’m glad I wrote it. Already I’m feeling better. Like a big load was lifted off my mind.
It’s only five weeks before I’ll see you again, Davie darling. What a pleasure to look forward to! And by that time, no doubt, you’ll have an entirely new murder that you can tell me about.
With love, like always,
Mom
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
A NICE MURDER FOR MOM. Copyright © 1988 by James Yaffe. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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First Edition
eISBN 9781250145048
First eBook edition: October 2016